Being able to install new apps developed by third parties gave the iPhone a whole new dimension that other phones simply couldn’t offer, so the iPhone’s stroke of genius was its apps. Before the iPhone, your phone came with a pre-installed set of apps (usually games, a calendar and an alarm clock), and that was that. To get new features you needed a new phone.

The iPhone changed all that by letting you install new apps that fundamentally changed the features of the phone in thousands of different ways.

Except, it wasn’t a new idea, even years before the iPhone was released. Symbian had offered the ability to add apps to its phones for years.

So why did the iPhone become the phone with apps and Symbian become the forgotten mobile OS?…

Simple: Symbian’s obsession with security. In what should be a huge wake up call to Steve Jobs and the increasingly totalitarian regime that he’s creating around the walled garden that is everything i (iPhone, iPad, iTunes, iPod), Symbian insisted on approving each and every app that was written for the Symbian platform.

The only problem was that its approval process was even slower than Apple’s. Whereas iPhone apps can take from a week to 2 months to be approved, a Symbian app still takes half a year before it’s approved!

Half a year is simply insane. The smartphone market is so fast moving that an app is usually out of date 6 months after it’s first released.

According to Lee Williams, Symbian’s Executive Director, this is still the case now. So not only did Symbian squander the app advantage they had when the iPhone was first launched, they continued to do nothing about the situation for a full three years while Apple cut a swathe throught the market unabated.

Sometimes you want to just bang your head against the wall at the sheer incompetence of large organizations!

Found this really interesting article on MobileMentalism :

After the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Samsung made as much noise as possible about Wave and Bada I have remained curious about the development of yet another OS platform. I really wonder how Samsung plans to actually stand up to the open platform of Android and the existing WinMo and other fringe platforms like LiMo. How could they get developers to actually adopt still another OS and thus fragment the market yet further… not to mention make things even more complicated for development houses.

It is quite obvious what motivates them.. they want to replicate Apple’s success and to a lesser extent to Android’s extent. Samsung wants an app store that allows them a piece of the pie!

Being one of the largest handset manufacturers in the world (about 20% of world wide handset sales) of course does give them a certain pull. But this didn’t do it for Nokia which remains the largest by far but still struggles with imposing Symbian as a viable platform and it’s other ventures such as Maemo/MeeGo flounder. Nokia’s OVI remains an app store player but not a run-away success.

Samsung has recently launched their first Bada phones in Europe and claim plenty of big name content providers who have developped in Bada : Electronic Arts, Gameloft, The Associated Press, CNN, WeatherBug, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Universal Film, Layar, Expedia Affiliate Network, ZAGAT, and many others.Including well-known applications such as Need for Speed Shift (EA), Weather Bug(WeatherBug), Zagat to go(Handmark), and Travel Booker(Expedia) are cited as Bada developers.

But can Samsung really replicate what Apple has done with a closed circuit ? Well a tidbit in their press release seems that they hint at not keeping it closes :
This content will facilitate the development of applications for not just the Samsung Wave, but all other mobile phones that adopt Bada as their platform of choice.

So Samsung plans to licence out the Bada OS ? Seems like it.

But they plan on then selling all applications developed via their store as evidenced by this statement :
Applications developed with the bada SDK can be sold through ‘Samsung Apps’, Samsung’s application store.

Now that seems strange… would LG developers to sell apps for their Bada phones via Samsung’s application store ? I think NOT! So what are we talking about here ? A multitude of app stores for each handset manufacturer ?

I really don’t have the answers but I thought that this article was very interesting article which gives a projected market like this :

So in that hypothetical model the market shares among the Top 10 would be in a couple of years something like

Symbian (Nokia) 35%
Android (LG, ZTE, SonyEricsson, Motorola, Huawei) 23%
Bada (Samsung) 21%
Blackberry (RIM) 4%
iPhone OS/X (Apple) 3%
all other smartphone makers which would include 15 more brands for Android, plus HP/Palm, Microsoft, plus some Japanese etc on Symbian, Linux Mobile etc would share the remaining 14%

Whatever the case it is quite exciting to see what will happen over the rest of year. Lets watch and see..

In response to queries about its future product plans, Skype issued a statement that indicates the company plans to offer an application to all Android handsets later this year, and it will include a video chat feature.

The statement reads, “Skype envisions a world where video plays a larger role in the way we communicate. It’s on computers, televisions, and it will eventually be coming to mobile devices too. We’re betting big on video, and we intend to set the bar on mobile video calling, and it’s something we’re going to do this year. We will be bringing a direct to consumer app to the Android marketplace later this year. This application will be available for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers.”

Right now, Skype on Android is limited to Verizon Wireless’ handsets. Competitor Fring recently announced a new Android application that offers free video calling. Fring aggregates together a number of services, such as Skype, MSN, ICQ, GTalk and other IM platforms into a single application.

LG-made low-cost Android smartphone is planned to be launched by Orange in Europe later this year. Operator’s affordable smartphone strategy has been emerging this week and it includes a range of devices made by Chinese vendors including Huawei, ZTE and Gigabyte.

According to Patrick Remy, Orange’s vice president of devices, at the beginning of 2010, 15% of Orange portfolio was smartphones and this will rise to 30% by the end of the year, and will be 50% by 2013 while with the plethora of white label devices in the pipeline, Orange’s low-cost smartphone portfolio will also include handsets designed by “A-brand” phone makers. The company LG is on the first A-brand product in its affordable smartphone range.

No specific information about the launch timetable and likely cost of the device has been revealed yet. The handset includes the entire standard features like a touchscreen interface, WiFi, GPS, full Web-browsing, and a five megapixel camera and the Android-powered smartphone will launching soon in Spain, Austria, Slovakia and Romania.

The company has explained its objective as- to make low-cost smartphones available for free even on low-cost tariffs and it is in discussions that could see it offer cheap smartphones to prepay customers, with devices that are priced around €120. Orange’s aim of doubling revenues from mobile multimedia services between now and 2012 will get a push from these cheap smartphones.

The operator is putting extra focus on highlighting services like mobile social networking, instant messaging, location-based services and content, taking lesson from the fact that at the beginning of 2009 only one in 10 Orange customers was using mobile multimedia services.

Remy also opined that 25% of Orange’s customers are now using mobile multimedia, which is significant and tremendous growth, but it still means 75% of its customer base are not multimedia users and Orange’s affordable smartphone range will further lower the barrier to mobile multimedia uptake.

A rather brilliant article in iMedia Connection (http://bit.ly/anVI4W) highlights some of the flaws in Apples strategy, and refers to what many partners (developer especially), perceives as pure arrogance.

Among the noteworthy points made are:

* “Apple’s desire to control its marketplace has made it a poor choice for developers, even when it offers a large market. Having a large base of customers makes Apple initially attractive, but its poor support for the developer community eventually forces smaller niche players out.”

* “When Steve Jobs announced MS Office for the Mac to a stunned audience in 1997, he looked very uncomfortable about it. He justified it by saying Apple existed in an eco-system and could not sustain the Mac as a closed platform. His iPhone strategy seems to have forgotten this painful lesson.”

* “The iPhone may be popular now, but history has shown us that the days of competing operating systems eventually give way to more open platforms. The world will not tolerate three or four competing smartphone systems with roughly equal market share. Eventually, one system will dominate. Apple’s iPhone OS and BlackBerry’s RIM are not candidates for that role because they’re not available for other phones, which only leaves Google’s Android and Microsoft’s WinOS as candidates for global domination. “

The mobile device market is quite fragment these days. We have the mighty iPhone , Andorid , Blackberry,Simbian, Maemo, Brew ,Windows Mobile powered devices and so on. Publishing software compatible with all these mobile platform is quite a challenge. What is the current situation , regarding the mobile cross-platform development?

I will not make an exhaustive market analysis here, but will share some thoughts. The mobile device market is changing rapidly during the last few years. One reason is the entrance of the new major players – iPhone and Andorid. They forced the old players like Nokia, Sony Erricson , RIM, Microsoft and everybody else to hurry up and catch the train. Apple gave us the new fresh air, which the mobile business needed for years. The old dinosaurs chasing low-risk profits forgot about the main engine of the current technological business – the innovation!
Apple was the one to make them remember that innovation (both technological and business) is not a dirty word and actually may increase profits. Yes the innovation and risk go hand in hand, but that’s way : ideas, passion, commitment and risk.

The following chart provides information about the preferences of the users to some of the current mobile platforms:

By Egle Mikalajunaite and Ralf-Gordon Jahns

Mobile apps have been around for some time and there is a lot of hype around the developing market. But how sustainable is this development, and where does it lead? In summary, our analysis shows that apps will eventually be as important for companies as web pages are today.

The main drivers:

What are the reasons for this optimistic view? Here are just six reasons why we think that apps will become as important as Websites to companies in the next years:

1. Ubiquity of smartphones: Smartphones will increasingly replace feature phones in stores. Nearly everyone will be able to use smartphone apps, not just – as of now – business people, social networkers and gamers. The main driver will be a reduction in handset prices, which will decrease to 100 Euro for most starter devices.

2. Manifoldness of possibilities: Smartphones are small computers which are becoming more and more powerful. They will be suitable for an increasing number of tasks which have previously been restricted to laptops or desktops. Today smartphone apps are used by companies to promote their brand or product, or to provide access to their existing products. In the future we will see a lot more use-cases, e.g. new products enabled by apps, mobile health, mobile selling, or apps which help to improve working efficiency within a company.

3. Ubiquity of app stores: For the foreseeable future, Smartphones will always depend on the app stores. If you have a smartphone or advanced feature phone you will have easy and convenient access to the world of apps.

4. Unmatched user-experience: Apps offer a user-experience which mobile Websites or widgets are unable to provide.

5. Proximity to customers: Mobile devices, especially Smartphones, are much more personal and intimate devices than a laptop or desktop device. For most users their phones are never further than 1 meter away 24/7. Imagine how attractive it is for consumer goods, food, and myriad other companies across the economy to be able to place their products and services so close to consumers.

6. Better visibility: Although there is a lot of clamor about the discoverability of apps, especially in the Apple App Store, standing out among 140,000 apps is much easier than being found amongst millions of websites. In addition, these distribution platforms are stores, and unlike the web or its search engines, they are designed to sell and present products. Cross-selling and promotions are components of their core features. The new geneneration of app stores make it easier than ever before to be in the forefront of millions of potential customers’ minds.

Although there is still a long way to go before many companies learn how to benefit from and how to engage in this exciting new market, but it won’t take long before it becomes standard business practice, especially for media, consumer goods, automotive, and food companies to communicate with their customers via an app. This applies especially to the Western and Asian countries with high smartphone shipment rates but will also impact emerging markets with a short time-delay.

Google is getting lots of attention with its Android operating system, which is now adding about 100,000 phones a day, but what about the other Linux-based OS ?
The LiMo Foundation so far has been operating under the radar and has been limited to one handset launch with Vodafone and 60 in Japan and South Korea. You can find all their handsets here : LiMo handsets

LiMo says to now expect three major operators to launch a handset based on the OS this year, reports Reuters. The list of possible carriers include: France Telecom (Orange), Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and SK Telecom.

Morgan Gillis, Executive Director at LiMo foundation, said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit, that he believes the mobile operating system space will consolidate over the mid-term. “I think that the eventual number of industry device operating systems will be no more than five, probably four. Within that … one platform that is not owned by any one company … LiMo is definitely a candidate to perform that role,” he said.

He added that he believes Symbian will make a come-back over the next year or so, and that the other dominant players will be Android, Windows and Apple. That leaves out RIM’s BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS, and others, like Samsung’s bada.

Now I agree with him that there will be around 5 OSs but counting out Blackberry is for me a long stretch as it is presently still the leader of the smartphone market ! The weakest are really Symbian and WinMo but both are back by very large players.. and so can’t be written off so quickly.

I would be interested in what our readers feel on this subject ?

Mobile marketing firm Velti has filed to raise up to $200 million in a U.S. IPO. The company, which provides a platform advertisers use to manage their mobile ad campaigns, says it will use the proceeds to pay back all of its $39 million in debt, as well as for “general corporate purposes.”

Velti has been trading on the AIM stock exchange in London for four years, so its financial status was already known. (It raised $17 million in its IPO there in 2006). The company’s F-1 filing does however provide some updates: Its revenue was $90 million last year, up from $62 million in 2008. Net income was $6.2 million, compared to a $6.2 million loss in 2008. And Velti paid $3.6 million for Ad Infuse, the U.S.-based mobile ad startup it purchased a year ago.

Yes it is a spoof but you have to say that some of the comments are.. well true !